Critical observations of print/broadcast/Web media plus public relations and advertising

November 10, 2014

Grumpy Editor finds the Los Angeles Times newsroom gets excited over the word “earthquake” and via its website or print version almost daily reports shakers (no matter how small), mostly in California. On Friday the newspaper came up with: Swarm of earthquakes in Nevada desert is intensifying

The swarm’s location, to be precise, is about 525 miles from the L.A.Times building at 1st and Spring Streets in Los Angeles. The report pinpointed the location in Nevada’s extreme northwest corner, 50 miles southeast of Lakeview, Ore., a sparsely-populated area.

The report, by a staff writer, pointed out “about 750 earthquakes, mostly magnitude 2.0 to 3.0, have struck the area” since July.

Deep into the story, John Vidale, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network at the University of Washington, said: “It doesn't necessarily mean anything big is coming, but it does raise the risk there will be a bigger quake in the future. Ninety-nine percent of the time nothing too dramatic happens, but every now and then there is a good pop and everyone asks why we didn't predict it."

Other media picked up the report. But the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada’s largest newspaper, didn’t run the swarms information until two days later. It covered the subject in nine sentences via Reuters.

CNN on Saturday mentioned, ‘The vast majority of the current Nevada swarm's quakes have been undetectable to people walking around on top of them.”

In San Francisco, where talk of earthquakes easily shakes up residents, KCBS radio’s website on Friday spotlighted the event under the headline: Ongoing Earthquake Swarm In Nevada Increasing Chances For A ‘Big One’

USA Today jumped into the shaker act on Saturday picking up, in part, information contained in the L.A. Times and CNN stories.

Most interesting, however, was the earthquake swarms story on Nov. 6 (a day before the L.A. Times version) in the Herald and News, Klamath Falls, Ore. It was written by the newspaper’s editor, Gerry O’Brien --- from a press release.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This just in: Continuing its focus on earthquakes, today’s L.A. Now section on the L.A. Times website reports a magnitude 4.1 shaker at a depth of 6.8 miles in the Pacific with the epicenter 69 miles from Newport Beach in Orange County.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++=

IN CASE YOUR FAVORITE NEWS OUTLETS MISSED THESE…

A reminder as frigid Arctic air makes its way today to the central plains and then eastward with temperatures 20 to 40 degrees below normal: A recent Gallup poll found concern over climate change ranked last among 16 issues voters cared about in the midterm elections…In the “huh?” department. The lead to a story in the Nov. 6 Wall Street Journal: "Electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. reported a wider third quarter loss"… Then the next day in the newspaper's “The Good News” portion of “Stocks in the News” feature: Tesla stock was up $10.25 a share stemming from, as the WSJ put it: “The electric car maker beat earnings forecasts”…A top-of-the-hour ABC News item on radio Friday focused on Home Depot announcing about 53 million customer email addresses were stolen by hackers. That was in addition to earlier reports that 56 million credit card accounts were compromised. That news was followed by a Home Depot commercial…How many times with the same “warning” over the past few months?Federal Reserve officials on Friday warned about market turbulence as the central bank prepares to raise short-term interest rates next year…Reuters decided to stop allowing readers to comment on its online stories…As Thanksgiving approaches, a reminder from the Associated Press Style Book on bread-related items: With breadbox, breadcrumb, breadstick and cornbread, keep it a single word. But not bread pudding…Operation United Assistance, the U.S. military mission to combat Ebola in West Africa, likely will last until 2016, according to Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

January 13, 2014

With “global warming” getting socked following an ice-stuck Russian ship with “warming” followers aboard during summertime in the Antarctic along with record cold over most of the U.S. last week plus Southern California getting another round of earthquake perils stories, media are turning to another periodic nature-triggered standby: drought, with a lengthy New York Times feature as a prime example, notes Grumpy Editor.

The N.Y. Times story focuses on the 1,450-mile Colorado River “being sapped by 14 years of drought nearly unrivaled in 1,250 years.”

(One wonders who was measuring the river flow going back to 728 years before Columbus discovered America.)

N.Y. Times writer Michael Wines relates “many experts believe the current drought is only the harbinger of a new, drier era in which the Colorado’s flow will be substantially and permanently diminished.”

(The Colorado River depends mainly on Rocky Mountains snow melt. Precipitation varies from year to year, as any meteorologist will explain. Thus, a period of low measurement could be followed by an above-average or a record-breaking tally.)

Most interesting in the N.Y. Times piece is that while citing the Colorado River provides water to Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada and California --- and that drought-linked possible rationing lies ahead --- a vital missing word in the article is Mexico.

Mexico siphons 1.5 million acre-feet out of the 16.5 million acre-feet per year from the Colorado River and Lake Mead, stemming from appropriations in a 1944 treaty. That’s five times the allotment of a skimpy 300,000 acre-feet annually for the whole state of Nevada, not just Las Vegas as reported by some media.

In case you missed these…

FAST WORK BY MAJOR TV NETWORKS.Media Research Center President Brent Bozell points out how the big three TV networks jumped on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the bridge traffic case by devoting “17 times more coverage to this story in one day, one day, than they devoted to the IRS scandal in six months."

A NO-NO IN NEWSPAPERS BUT OKAY ON THE BIG SCREEN. Current showing of the Martin Scorsese-directed film, "The Wolf of Wall Street," contains more than 500 utterances of the f-word. Now, that’s entertainment and explains why the repeated word contributes to the footage extending to three hours.

“MADE IN CHINA” FOOTAGE STANDS IN FOR L.A. “Here,” a currently-playing film, snubs the real City of the Angels with scenes of a future Los Angeles --- shot in Pudong, a district of Shanghai.

BUT WHAT WAS ON THE MENU? In a simple move to offset Washington media’s frustration on the administration’s policy of limiting photos to those taken by the official White House photographer, press photographers last Wednesday were allowed to photograph a weekly President Obama-Vice President Biden lunch meeting.

SUNDAY MORNING NEWS SHOWS REACH MILESTONES. CBS’Face the Nation, is now in its 60th year on the network. The program expanded to one hour in many markets in 2012 and became the most watched Sunday public affairs program for the 2012-2013 season. Bob Schieffer has been at the helm for the past 23 years. NBC’s “Meet the Press,” longest running similar Sunday offering, marks 67 years later in 2014.

TV NEWS VIEWERS FADE. Pew Research analysis of Nielsen Media Research figures show TV network news viewers fell to 24.5 million last year from an average 48 million in 1985. The findings note the 18 to 29 age group is the least likely to watch network news regularly --- just 11 percent did so in 2012 --- and 49 percent in that category say they never watch TV news.

MAGAZINE COVER STORIES FOCUS ON CLUTTER. “Get Cash for Your Clutter” is in Woman’s Day, with a two-pager in the February issue, while Better Homes and Gardens features “Clutter Nightmares Solved” spread over five pages in the January issue.

January 06, 2014

The Los Angeles Times, in the quiet news period between Christmas and New Year’s Day, came up with another periodic earthquake story to shake up readers and in the process made it difficult for future rentals of two under-construction apartment projects, notes Grumpy Editor.

Under bylines of three staffers citing a Times analysis focusing on Los Angeles and Santa Monica, the Dec. 30 story mentioned approvals by those cities of “more than a dozen construction projects on or near two well-known faults without requiring seismic studies to determine if the buildings could be destroyed in an earthquake.”

Pinpointing a West Los Angeles address of a 49-unit apartment complex under construction, the story pointed out a 2010 state map “suggests the (Santa Monica) fault could sit directly under the apartments.”

Also mentioned was the address of a west side 63-unit apartment building being built and the same fault “could be under the site,” said the writers who added an estimated 1,400 buildings have been erected on or next to Santa Monica or Hollywood earthquake faults.

The story followed an October Times piece that reported “more than 1,000 old concrete buildings in Los Angeles and hundreds more throughout the county may be at risk of collapsing in a major earthquake.”

In case you missed these…

KEEPING THE LID ON GLOBAL WARMING. While there was much coverage of the Russian ship Akademic Shokalskiy getting stuck in Antarctic ice and its 48 passengers rescued and now are aboard an Australian ship, little was mentioned that it is the summer season in the Southern Hemisphere, and passengers were on a global warming mission. Mike Ciandella at NewsBusters tallied 40 out of 41 stories on TV network news shows since Dec. 25 “failed to mention climate change had anything to do with the expedition.”

A SMOKING HEADLINE. Colorado pot smokers start 2014 on a high note was the clever headline over an Al Kamen New Year’s Day Washington Post story on Colorado becoming the first state to set up a system for legal cultivation and sale of marijuana.

VETERAN COLUMNIST TURNS LAWYER. Frank Mickadeit, Orange County (Calif.) Register columnist for 10 years, passed the bar and entered the new year with a Costa Mesa, Calif., law firm. Before clearing out his newspaper desk, he issued this advice: "Never talk to a reporter without your lawyer present."

A Gallup poll ranking “high” or “very high” honesty and ethical standards of 22 professions placed newspaper reporters 15th on the list and TV reporters 17th. Topping the rankings were pharmacists while lobbyists were at the bottom.

October 21, 2013

In a periodic reminder that Los Angeles area
residents live in an earthquake zone, the Los
Angeles Times produced another shaker piece last week, this time focusing
on “more
than 1,000 old concrete buildings in Los Angeles and hundreds more throughout
the county may be at risk of collapsing in a major earthquake,” observed Grumpy Editor.

The triple-byline story, based on a Times analysis, pointed out many older concrete
structures “are vulnerable to the sideways movement of a major earthquake
because they don't have enough steel reinforcing bars to hold columns in
place.”

Earthquake
forecasts aimed at Californians seem to be an almost annual ritual to shake up
readers and residents who don’t need to be reminded they are in earthquake
territory, just as other parts of the country are
susceptible to hurricanes, overflowing rivers, tornadoes and blizzards.

Prior “shake ‘em up” stories by the Associated Press warned:

+ California faces an almost certain risk
of being rocked by a strong earthquake by 2037, citing a seismic forecast by scientists that pointed to a magnitude 6.7 quake
(equal to the 1994 Northridge jolt) or larger.

+ A hypothetical model
indicated a 7.8 magnitude earthquake would “see Los Angeles and its suburbs
shake like a bowl of jelly” in less than two minutes and 50,000 people would be
injured.

+ “Seismic
jiggling” via a swarm of small earthquakes near the southern end of the San
Andreas Fault has some people wondering if the “swarm is just a warm-up to a
major quake,” causing serious damage to the greater Los Angeles region.

Separately,
the Los Angeles Times said it will no longer print letters from “climate change
deniers.”

Two contrasting items on Verizon Communications Inc. in Friday’s Wall Street
Journal. In “the good news”
portion of its “Stocks in the News” feature, the WSJ pointed out Verizon’s $1.65 gain in Thursday’s trading was
attributed to “the phone carrier reported
40 percent growth in third quarter net income.” A few pages away, the
headline on a long story read, “Verizon
ReportsSlowdown In Growth.” Nevertheless, Verizon’s stock added
another $1.11 in Friday’s trading to close at $50.01.

Delayed by the partial
U.S. government shutdown, the September
employment report from the Labor Department will be released tomorrow while
this month’s employment data will be pushed back a week to Nov. 8. Meanwhile, in a two-week delay, the consumer price index, measuring inflation,
was set for Oct. 30 release.

Bloomberg Businessweek veered from
focusing on business to slamming the tea party with the cover of its current
issue showing Ted Cruz, R-Texas, dressed
as the Mad Hatter with the line:
The Tea Party Won. Ted
Cruz and his band of dead enders took the U.S. through the looking glass. Now
crazy is the new normal…Also indicating
its political stance with the partial shutdown (neutrality used to be
emphasized in journalism) wasThursday's NBC Nightly News, with anchor Brian
Williams declaring: “Politically,
it's widely agreed to have been a big loss and self-inflicted wound mostly for
the Republican Party."

A key reason why young people do not read newspapers and magazines:CNSNews.com
reported an international survey from the U.S. Department of Education's
National Center for Education Statistics found Americans’ adult skills in literacy were tied in 15th place (with
Germany) among 23 advanced economies. Top three? Japan, Finland and The Netherlands. See the tally here…Latest Rasmussen Reports national survey found 78 percent of likely U.S. voters would vote to oust the entire
Congress and start over again.

Bank your dollars. This is National Save for Retirement Week.

Now that the 16-day partial
government shutdown is over, look for the recent days’ overused phrase --- kick the candown the road --- not popping up again until deep into the holiday
season...prior to another crisis looming early next year.

November 30, 2011

Already, one month before year’s end, and a Bing top 10 list of most searched news stories for 2011 is the first out of the chute, notes Grumpy Editor.

Search engine Bing, from Microsoft Corp., tallied news items on high profile trials of Casey Anthony (tops on the list) and Michael Jackson/Dr. Conrad Murray (No. 7) as among those getting the most attention.

September 06, 2011

With an unusual amount of extreme weather this year --- including hurricanes, tropical storms, tornadoes, blizzards, heat and drought --- it wasn’t a surprise to see an Associated Press story on nature’s fury appear over the weekend that suggested recent meteorological events were linked to global warming, notes Grumpy Editor.

And to complete nature’s action so far in 2011, writer Seth Borenstein worked into the story’s second paragraph non-meteorological-related recent Virginia, Colorado and Alaska earthquakes plus record wildfires in Arizona and New Mexico.

The story cited Germany-based insurance company Munich Re tallied 98 natural disasters in the U.S. in this year’s first half, “about double the average in the 1990s” --- without indicating how many were related to weather.

Nevertheless, recent “weather catastrophes” gave the writer an opportunity to compose this Las Vegas-style line:

“Man-made global warming is increasing the odds of getting a bad roll of the dice."

In summarizing what climate scientists said, toward the end of the text the writer mentioned, “Individual weather disasters so far can’t be directly attributed to global warming, but”…

August 25, 2011

In the wake of three major earthquakes in the news since Monday night, don’t be surprised to soon see another in a series (with AssociatedPress the best candidate) pointing to an upcoming “Big One” in California, figures Grumpy Editor.

Inspiration comes from a 5.3 magnitude earthquake that rattled the Colorado-New Mexico border Monday night, a 5.8 shaker than rumbled along the East Coast on Tuesday and a 6.9 temblor that hit northern Peru’s jungle region yesterday.

Of the trio, the East Coast quake that sent people into the streets in Washington, D.C., and New York City, stirred up the most action, grabbing hefty national air time and newspaper space Tuesday, yesterday and into today.

Periodically, AP reminds print and broadcast media --- so they can shake up readers/viewers --- that the “Big One” is coming.

Grumpy Editor feels another reminder is in the works.

One alarming example from a past AP story: “California faces an almost certain risk of being rocked by a strong earthquake by 2037.”

For that outlook, AP cited a seismic forecast by scientists that pointed to a magnitude 6.7 quake (equal to the 1994 Northridge jolt) or larger within 26 years.

Another past AP “shake ‘em up” story stemmed from a hypothetical model, worked up by scientists, that indicated a mighty 7.8 magnitude earthquake would “see Los Angeles and its suburbs shake like a bowl of jelly” in less than two minutes and 50,000 people would be injured in Southern California.

That would exceed the estimated 7.7 magnitude quake that rattled the lower section of the San Andreas Fault in Southern California 321 years ago and a 7.8 earth mover 154 years ago in Central California.

However, further earthquake coverage will take a back seat as strengthening Hurricane Irene moves up along the East Coast, affecting some of the same areas hit by Tuesday's shaker.

Weather and related developments such as power outages and flooding will be the focus of news coverage over the next few days and into the weekend.

March 14, 2011

In the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that slammed Japan on Friday, look for a bumper crop of stories by print and broadcast media this week with a “what if an earthquake happens here” angle, predicts Grumpy Editor.

First out of the chute, warning of problems with earth-shaking ahead, surprisingly comes from the relatively quiet seismic state of Utah rather than earthquake-prone California.

Weber State University geosciences professor Adolph Yonkee tells the Standard-Examiner in Ogden, just north of Salt Lake City, that a maximum quake on the nearby Wasatch fault could come tomorrow or 500 years from now.

The Wasatch fault, on the western edge of Wasatch Mountains, runs about 240 miles from southern Idaho to central Utah.

Problems from a major earthquake in Utah, writes Nancy Van Valkenburg, would be landslides and soil liquefaction, a situation where “soil fails to support solid objects and can become like quicksand, causing surface structures and objects to tilt or sink.”

Valkenburg notes the Utah Geological Survey says that state’s Weber and Davis counties have been hit by five major quakes --- in the past 6,500 years, the last being 500 years ago.

Meanwhile, with California’s San Andreas Fault a “breeding ground” for underground rumblings, expect the bulk of “what if” stories to originate with a California dateline.

One of the first to go airborne in the Golden State is Fox affiliate TV station KTXL, Sacramento. It alerts viewers to "what if the Japan quake hit California instead?"

And with any such story on earthquakes --- which scientists cannot predict the way meteorologists can forecast weather --- look for the dredging up of alarming-to-readers-or viewers terms such as “the big one,” “underground stress building” and “an increased risk of a major temblor.”